The Working Life - Part 2 continued

(continued from here)

Halfway through my time working here things just got worse for me. I typically got around 20-30 hours a week and a lot of days were 6-8 hours. After some time I was only getting around 10-20 working a couple days a week. I know at one point they were cutting lots of shifts and I'd get calls about not having to come into work. Found out other people got that too, so I was cool. There were also these stupid "on-call" shifts where you had to call in to see if you had to work. I really hated those. I was always very nervous about calling in. They usually used me 50% of the time. Depended on how busy they were a lot of times.

I don't remember when, but one day the manager pulled me aside to a couch somewhere in the store to talk with me. This is when things came crashing down. Her first statement was, "Have you noticed your hours lately?" By this, she was asking if I've noticed that I have less hours than everyone. I knew exactly where this conversation was going and I knew it wasn't going to be good. Well, of course I've noticed. I was getting 8-12 hours or something a week by this point. She always asked how I was doing and I said fine. I was handling my main duties just as well as anyone else except being more quiet.

She basically said I wasn't being assertive enough and should talk to the customers more about the weather or something. Assertiveness is definitely a weak point. It's something I have to work on and force myself to be which is really hard in these situations. Randomly talking to customers about stuff they probably didn't care to talk about seemed awkward to me. However, I always smiled and said to have a nice day and if they found everything alright.

Well at this point she asked what was wrong so as much as I hated it, I flat out told her that I have social anxiety. I can't remember if she knew what that was or if I explained it because I was in the process of holding a ton of tears in and running at the top of my anxiety level. I could not start crying in the store when I had to return back to work after this talk was over. I had to act cool like the talk was about nothing. Afterwards she started going on about some problem she has. I forget what it was but I was trying to make myself feel better over whatever she was saying. I just wanted out of this situation and out of work so I could let out my flood of tears.

I went back to the loft I was staying at and just cried for hours and hours. I even called my mom and cried some more. I was in so much pain and felt so depressed and disappointed with myself. All I could think of was that I would never be successful in a job because this is how I am no matter how good I think I am performing at my job. I knew it was always going to be a struggle like this. I tried to remind myself in the midst of all of this that this was quite an accomplishment for me no matter what anyone said about my assertiveness. The fact that I willingly took this job was a HUGE step for me. But I still couldn't help crying and being angry about the person I was.

The next day I went to work, the first thing she said was "Be sure to check the schedule, I made some changes." I was excited to see she turned my on-call days into actual work days to give me more hours. I was really happy about that. But it wasn't long (let's say, next week), until my hours were less than everyone's again. Wow, this sucks. I can't do this anymore. It was depressing.

I was sticking it out until my cousin came back. I was loft and cat sitting for her while she was away all summer. Which the loft was equally as depressing because it was like a dark cave. I absolutely hated staying there. Luckily she came back at the end of July and requested to have the loft back to herself to adjust. I was fine. I wanted out of there so bad. Of course my drive to work was going to be much longer.

My hours were so pathetic that I only had to drive to work twice within the week. I had put in my two weeks and the manager returned from some vacation just in time and her first question was "Is this about the hours?" It was a yes and no answer, however, I said no and was just going back to Missouri and that I was basically kicked out of the loft. Was reasonable and true.

She actually mentioned about being transferred to a store up there. She was going to call up that manager but I don't think she ever did. I'll tell you about this in the next part.